We propose a scale-free network model with a tunable power-law exponent. The Poisson growth model, as we call it, is an offshoot of the celebrated model of Barabási and Albert where a network is generated iteratively from a small seed network; at each step a node is added together with a number of incident edges preferentially attached to nodes already in the network. A key feature of our model is that the number of edges added at each step is a random variable with Poisson distribution, and, unlike the Barabási-Albert model where this quantity is fixed, it can generate any network. Our model is motivated by an application in Bayesian inference implemented as Markov chain Monte Carlo to estimate a network; for this purpose, we also give a formula for the probability of a network under our model. © 2008 The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Tokyo.